Bust and Beyond
Failure is a part of life and business, and I experienced the failure of a business in 2015 that my father had started in 1969. The effect it had on me emotionally was huge, yet the outside world knew nothing. I kept it to myself. I learnt so much from that failure, and it made me determined to support other business owners in the construction industry to avoid failure and flourish.
As I started to speak to business owners about failure, I learnt just how many had suffered from mental health issues and harmful thoughts. This drove me to start my podcast to educate and let people know how to avoid failure and know if they are going through failure, they are not alone, but more importantly, there is life and success after the failure of your business.
Bust and Beyond
E39 Rebuilding After Bankruptcy: Stacey Stewart's Journey
What happens when you lose everything you've built? Stacey Stewart knows this reality all too well. From climbing the corporate ladder at IBM to building luxury homes and entire subdivisions in Texas, Stacey's property development journey exemplifies both spectacular success and devastating failure.
The 2008 housing crisis struck Stacey particularly hard. With 35 homes in various stages of completion and no buyers in sight, she watched her thriving business crumble into bankruptcy. The aftermath was brutal—depression, divorce, losing custody of her daughter, and ultimately finding herself homeless, living in her repossessed daycare van. "It was very taxing on my mental health," she shares with remarkable candor. "I felt like I wanted to give up."
Yet from this rock bottom emerged an extraordinary comeback story. Through faith, determination, and the crucial support of a friend who believed in her when no one else would, Stacey began rebuilding. Starting with just $5,000 borrowed from a relative and relying on hard money lenders with punishing terms, she fought her way back into the industry she loved. Fifteen years of persistence later, she proudly declares, "I became a multimillionaire all over again. I've been a multimillionaire three times in my life."
Today, Stacey leverages her hard-won wisdom to help others avoid similar pitfalls. Her three essential tips for property developers—get a mentor, educate yourself thoroughly, and build the right support network—come directly from experiences that nearly broke her. "It humbled me," she reflects on her failure. "It made me a better person."
Discover the raw reality of entrepreneurial resilience and the transformative power of perseverance in this compelling conversation that proves failure isn't final—it's formative.
Hello and welcome to Bust and Beyond with your host, robin Hayhurst. In this podcast, robin will introduce guests that have known failure and want to share their story about how they got through it and what happened next. This will make you learn how to see things from a new perspective and avoid making the same mistakes. Please welcome Robin Hayhurst.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and welcome to Bust and Beyond podcast. I'm Robin Hayhurst. Hello everybody and welcome to Bust and Beyond podcast. I'm Robin Hayhurst. I'm joined today by Stacey Stewart. Hello, stacey.
Speaker 3:Hello Robin. In the UK.
Speaker 2:It's really hot in the UK today, so it's a bit steamy here. What's it like over there? Because you're in the United States, aren't you?
Speaker 3:Yes, and it's just as hot probably even hotter over here.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but what we call hot isn't really hot. We just you know, if it's anything over 22 degrees, it's pub weather.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:It's about 29 today, so it's really pub weather.
Speaker 3:It's close to 100 over here in Dallas, texas.
Speaker 2:Okay that's Fahrenheit, isn't it? I've done all that in centigrade, but yeah, yes, that's right, absolutely so. Stacey, we had a chat the other day about your background and everything and you're into property and if I think you've got is it a site called Build With Stacey?
Speaker 3:Yes, it's a site called Build With Stacey and then our construction company is called Building With Integrity, a called Built with Stacey and then our construction company is called Building with Integrity aka.
Speaker 3:BWI Contractors. Okay, so how did that come about and why did you start that? Well, hey, when I came to this country, I saw that my parents were struggling to pay the bills and keep a roof over our head, and as a young adult I aspired to be my own boss which, of course, at that age I didn't know what that meant, but the drive and the ambition was there. So I had some jobs in corporate America, at Books for Dummies and IBM and all those great companies. But I stumbled across a couple who was an investor. One was the wife was a mortgage lender and the husband was a real estate broker. And they taught me how to fix a flip and do mortgages. And so I started doing a slew of investment properties in the East Coast. And then, when I moved to Texas in 2000, I started buying land and building new construction from the ground up.
Speaker 2:Gosh, so something must have inspired you to do all this, really. So where's your drive come from?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. So, like I said, watching my parents struggle and just everything that they went through, I just was determined not to be like that. So I had a fire inside of me at a young age to be a provider, not only for myself but also for my parents and my family. And I also became a mother by default at a young age, where I had to take on the responsibility of a nine-month-old and I was only 15. So I became a mother at a young age to someone else's kid. So I had no choice but to grow up fast and provide for a baby, and I was a baby myself. So that's where the drive came from.
Speaker 2:Okay. So quite a long journey and quite a complicated one, the fact that you're in corporate and you moved over into what we do development. So development is anything from flipping houses to new builds. You've done any new builds yet?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, I cut my teeth on the fix and flip for quite a while. But when I came here in 2000, I literally bought land. I built some high-end luxury homes. They were considered mini mansions. Anything over $600,000 is considered a mini mansion here, just because of what you get for it. And so, yeah, I built actually quite a bit from the ground up. I've even built a whole subdivision with 75 homes at one point. So I've done quite a bit of homes in my career. Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:Okay, so $600,000, I'm guessing.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:What kind of square foot are they then? So what's the mansion in America?
Speaker 3:There are about 4,000 to 5,000 square feet, six bedrooms, five baths, stained concrete and all the bells and whistles. And this was back in 2000. Yeah, oh, right so yeah, and a very prominent area called Lake Ridge and Joe Lake is by the lake, so very affluent area that some celebrities like Erykah Badu and other celebrities live in.
Speaker 2:So how did you go about doing those, and did you have a project manager? Is your project manager yourself? Are you hands onon or are you kind of hands-off in your approach?
Speaker 3:No very hands-on. When I was a fix-a-flipper I thought I knew it all right and I wanted to challenge myself because I figured I've done so many from the multifamily, commercial and just residential. So when I transitioned here in Texas in 2000, I wanted to challenge myself. So I bought land and I literally built it myself. I got the blueprints, I was the general contractor, builder, project manager, I was everything, all hands on deck. And so I learned from the what to say, I guess the roads of hard knocks. Because I had no mentor, I had no teacher, I had no guidance, I had no one. It was just me myself and I and I couldn't get a loan, no one would give me a financing for new construction. So I took my own money and I built it myself.
Speaker 2:Okay, so as far as having a mentor is concerned, would you change that, would you please? You came up the way you did, or would you prefer to have a mentor?
Speaker 3:If I would have known then what I know now, I would have not made the mistakes of not having a coach or a mentor, because by not having that coach and mentor I made a lot of mistakes I mean too many that you know at one point cost me my whole business, my whole career. I actually went bankrupt. So I think it's very important that if you start any business and you're not familiar with it, definitely need to put some money aside in your budget to hire someone that knows what they're doing so that you could avoid all those mistakes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a few people about that being there. The thing is, and this is really important you've got to pick someone that has done it, not someone who is just teaching. There's an old saying which says those that can do and those who can't teach, which I don't entirely agree with. There's some amazing coaches who maybe not have done exactly what you've done, but you want to make sure someone's trodden that road really understands it before you embark on paying what can be a lot of money for their help, because they've got to, like everyone, give value. So you said you went bust, you lost everything, unfortunately, being the title of the podcast Busted Beyond. This is what we're going to hone in on. So what happened?
Speaker 3:Well, in 2000, when I started building and I had money, my finances were stellar, my credit was stellar. So once I built the first house, then the floodgates were open. The lenders were lending me all sorts of money. Once I built the first house, then the floodgates were open. The lenders were lending me all sorts of money. I came across a guy by the name of Stephen Bennett, who I love so much. He introduced me to a subdivision. His name was the land man back then, so if you need any land, he was the man, and so he literally negotiated for me to get this piece of property and we developed it.
Speaker 3:I got about maybe 25 to 30 homes no-transcript in the mortgage industry. I couldn't get rid of them, I couldn't rent them, I couldn't do anything. And so, in trying to hold on to everything I was, holding on to my credit and not having anyone to rely on or talk to or mentor me, I just lost it all. And so I took about a couple of thousands of dollars that I had left over and I built a daycare in a shopping center, and so I survived by building that daycare. But unfortunately again, I wasn't familiar with how to be a director or into, you know, I wasn't, my background wasn't in child care, so I ended up losing that as well and then so I just became broke.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I mean it happens, we were in a difficult position in 2008 as well. I blame America, always blame America. It's all their fault.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:But we literally had, I think we had about 10 houses built on a site and we had them all reserved and we thought, you know, nothing's happening. And then suddenly, one by one, every single person dropped out because they literally couldn't get a mortgage. At the time we were being funded by a very large bank, a very famous international bank I won't say anything, won't name them and they're awful, really awful. They were really attempting to make us fail. By making us fail, they could grab everything we had. And they did that by pushing us into special lending, by charging us more and more and more and just being unhelpful.
Speaker 2:So I kind of went to do battle with them, but not in the way some people do, which is getting aggressive. And you know, I just started to climb their corporate ladder. I started with my manager and then his manager and then the manager above him and just said to him look, we've been banking with you since 1969. Are you really going to be the reason that we go bust? And they shut up shop in a way that it kind of wasn't obvious. They basically weren't lending, but they didn't say than say we're not lending.
Speaker 2:they put criteria down that was impossible to borrow money from them wow it was really, really, really difficult time and we ended up then using other lenders and doing some other stuff, which was useful because we'd always borrowed from the same bank, really.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I see how difficult it was and it really was a difficult time and it was something that, to be honest, could happen again. It could happen again, and I think you've always got to keep your you know, your eye on the ball and think, right, well, what could happen? And I think in the uk, one of the exit strategies we could have used and you obviously thought about it in the us, but I think it might have been where we've got an undersupply of housing in the uk we could have gone, rented, we could have rented them all out and most probably covered our debt, but we weren't set up for that and our funders weren't set up for that. So we'd have to change funders and people weren't lending because, as I said, they just weren't lending, whereas if we'd gone into the deal with that as a possible exit strategy, we would have been ready for it.
Speaker 3:Yep. So you know exactly what I'm talking about. You've experienced it yourself.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. It was a very, very fraught time, I think really. I mean, my company, my family company, failed in 2015. And from 2008 to 2015, we were fighting really because we lost a lot of money through that and we were trying to do lots of different things. So it was a difficult thing. When we fell in 2015, it wasn't because we got anything particularly big wrong. There's lots of things I'd done wrong, but we didn't have any money to fall back on. That was the problem. So we had that cash flow issue where suddenly you haven't got any cash.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's a major problem in construction.
Speaker 2:It is, it is. Yeah, it's a major problem in any business. You know, it's our oxygen.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 2:Cash is our oxygen, so if we haven't got it we're kind of buggered and people don't really get that. And do you know, Stacey, how many companies I speak to that have not got a cash flow forecast? Do you run a cash flow forecast?
Speaker 3:Yeah, now I do, because you know, ever since I've been through so many struggles and ups and downs in this business, it taught me to definitely forecast in advance and not overextend myself. So never again, would I not that I don't want to do a subdivision, but I wouldn't do it in a way that I did it before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're calling it a subdivision. What is that? Because we don't have that phrase over here.
Speaker 3:A subdivision is where you own the whole community, where you actually own the whole estate, where, say, you have 10, 15 acres and you develop it to put nothing but houses in it. Then you have the billboard outside and you have a model home. That's this whole entire subdivision. It's like a neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. So it's what we'd call an estate, or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're still selling individual homes and they're still detached or semi-detached or a mixture.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the subdivision that I had. It was 75 homes, so each site was built out like almost like platted individually for individual homes spread out in this particular community, and I owned all the lots. But I was only building under a takedown schedule and at the time that I acquired and actually erected 35 homes on the ground, some were finished, some weren't finished. So that's when I got caught with my pants down, so to speak, when the market crashed.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, yeah, it's a similar situation. Building in the UK, I think, is generally a lot more expensive and land costs a lot more expensive. So you know, we have a shortage of land, whereas America is quite a big place, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Oh, in Texas there is an abundance of land, but it's just so expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, it's expensive over here. You'd be shocked. You'd be shocked. So, you'd be shocked, you'd be shocked. So you know just house prices and everything. It's a lot more really. It's a big part of how we live. In fact, your house, if you own it, is such a big part of you and your future and your pension and everything else, because it is the most expensive thing you'll ever buy.
Speaker 3:Yep, and you still don't own it. As soon as you miss a payment, that's it, it's gone. The bank owns it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so that is a problem. We all aim to be mortgage-free, but if you read some of the stuff like Rich Dad, Poor Dad is it?
Speaker 2:Yes, you don't own your own house. You rent it and then you own assets to pay for the rent and I get that, but I don't think it's how most people live and I'm not sure that that methodology is entirely right. But there we are. So your failure. How did it affect you emotionally? Because people don't talk about this. I remember going to there's a very famous guy in the UK that failed, a guy called Gerald Ratner. Have you ever heard of Gerald Ratner?
Speaker 3:No sir.
Speaker 2:Okay. So it's almost gone on to kind of we have a phrase doingerald ratner. Have you ever heard of gerald ratner? No, sir. Okay. So it's almost gone on to kind of we have a phrase doing a ratner. Okay, so gerald ratner, who I've met and in fact he's doing business coaching now, I think, and he's doing speaking and stuff like that he said something in jest about jewelry. He was a really, really big jewelry sales guy so he had, you know, most of the stores in the uk that sold jewelry were his. I think his turnover was around about a billion and this was a long time ago and he made a joke about it being not the best quality. But it was a joke and everything crashed overnight for him and he went bust. But he's making a comeback now and yeah, so Gerald Ratner is a kind of really good example of people that have failed and really come back.
Speaker 2:He did a speech and it was really funny, really enjoyed it, and he made it funny. You know, he said that he went from, you know, a wife that nearly divorced him because he worked too hard to a wife that nearly divorced him because she didn't go out of the house after his failure. But he didn't talk about how it affected him emotionally. I think it's a big thing, you know, because we all look at people going bust and I think failure is. You know, I think Americans' attitude towards failure and our attitude towards failure is slightly different. But you know, we don't shout about failure. In fact I get comments, you know, to me and through people about what I put out on social media because I talk about failure a lot. But I talk about failure because we learn so much from it. We learn so so much from it. It's really important we don't talk about it, but it does affect our mental health. So how did it affect you? How did you feel and what was your day-to-day like when you were going through that process of failing?
Speaker 3:Well, I could say it was very emotional to go from rags to riches and from riches to rags, and it was very emotional. It almost broke me to the point where I didn't want to continue in this business. But it's not about how you, you know, if you fall, it's not the fact that you fall, but it's how you, you know, get up again. And so I didn't want to come back into this business. I decided to get back into it again because a friend of mine persuaded me and just kind of like you know, she was a heaven sent. She just encouraged me and she kept looking for opportunities that I can get into.
Speaker 3:But it was a very trying time. It was taxing on my mental health. I went through depression. I went through a divorce as well. Then I couldn't take care of my daughter, so she was taken from me. I literally lived in a van, my daycare van. So when I lost my daycare, my van became my home. They wanted to repo it, but they couldn't find me, and it's because I was literally living in it, so I was driving all over the place. They had no idea how to catch up to me. But thank God they didn't take that from me because I don't know what would have happened. So it was a very trying time, but that was a time when I got into my faith and more spiritual, I believe I got closer to my creator. I felt like I wanted to give up right, but of course I didn't take my own life because I'm still here, right.
Speaker 3:But it was a very depressing time, very mental, very taxing. The good Lord was by my side. He brought me an angel, like I said, Tony, who inspired me, and she got me into another area that was going to be booming at the time. And she had this vision and I'm glad I believed in her, because once I borrowed money from a relative, I was so broke I couldn't get anything. My credit scores were like a 200. So I literally had nothing. I was just like the bum on the street practically.
Speaker 3:And so when I borrowed the money and I was able to go through a hard money to get the construction loan, so my aunt gave me the money for the land it was just $5,000 through the land bank from the city and then I got a hard money lender, which you know was very taxing. I didn't really make that much money, but it got me back on my feet in terms of being able to get lending again, using this hard money lender to get other properties, and I just rinsed and repeated the process and so on and so forth to where I got out of the van, I got me an apartment. I just fought my way for about another 15 years and then I rebuilt it myself and I became a multimillionaire all over again. But I was a multimillionaire three times in my life. I went up and down, up and down three times.
Speaker 2:But would you be?
Speaker 3:It was very challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a difficult question. I've thought about this a lot. Would you be who you are today and where you are today without that failure?
Speaker 3:No, no, because I think it made me a better person. It humbled me, you know. It taught me to depend and rely on my creator and I became very resourceful and resilient. So, yeah, it made me a better person right now, and I'm more cautious in what I do and how I do it and who I surround myself with. So, yes, it definitely changed me in a positive way.
Speaker 2:That's good. I mean, I believe the same. I coach and mentor people now and I think without failure I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't be the right mindset. I understand what it's like to go bust. I understand what it's like to come through the other side of it. So, the same way as I kind of I can I can explain to people and lots of people think, oh, I can just find my way through this, I can get through it, I can get through. I'll borrow more money and more money or whatever. I can explain to them that that's not the way forward.
Speaker 2:That's going to create a really big problem for them and try and get them to focus back on the business. So what often happens with people when they're in stress and I'm sure you would have recognized this just in yourself is you kind of start thinking about failure and you get stressed about failure, which stops you from running your business, which kind of means you fail. So, however hard you think you're fighting because of that stress and because of that we're going to fail. We're going to fail. Yes, you're not running your business, you're not changing it in the way that needs to change and I think you know Tony Robbins says, where focus goes, energy flows, and that's really, really true. So you know, it's a really important part of going through the process and learning that you've got to focus on what you need to change, not what's going wrong.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So you know, it's quite important.
Speaker 3:That's so true.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so where are you now? So what's your portfolio? Look like what's your day-to-day. Look like what's the day in Stacey's life.
Speaker 3:Look like Well, you know, I realized that in almost 30 years in this business that you know. Unfortunately, I can't wait for anyone out there to give me anything right. I have to go and get it. So I'm now positioning myself to where I could get my government credentials together and get my certificates and everything aligned so I can transition into a different market, so to speak.
Speaker 3:I've done the residential construction for so long that I want to step into the multifamily and the government arena. So right now I'm focusing on doing that and getting some business with the government there and working with the municipalities to do a lot of cohorts and just get my education and my career positioned to where I could take on larger projects. Yeah, so that's what I'm doing now, and I also teach and mentor other aspiring builders that are in this space so that they don't make the mistakes that I've made. So that's what I'm focusing on now. I think I'm going to retire eventually maybe in another five years or so at least build a few apartment complexes as well as getting a stable contract with the government and eventually sell my company and then just focus on teaching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I love teaching. It's something I absolutely adore. People don't always know they need help, but that's sometimes the difficult part, you know. I suppose you could call it selling it, but it's really nice to help people and to see they don't even shout about it sometimes. I had a client the other day. He went yeah, I did quite well last month. I said well, what do you mean? You did well? Well, he said you told me to put my prices up and I still won three jobs, which has mostly made about a £30,000 difference to my company because the increase in price and the extra kind of money I've got coming in, I'm thinking that's quite nice. He just happened to generally mention it. I don't think if I'd asked him he would have said you know, there's lots of people that seem to get lost out of it and it's great.
Speaker 2:And retirement, I can't seem to have retired. This is my hobby and I get to speak to wonderful people like you on podcasts. So you know I it's just a nice thing to do, so I don't really see it as work, so I don't see it has been. You know, retirement, and I get to travel all around the country. I'm hoping one day to to get an all exclusive you know, paid trip to America, to to speak over there or do something like that. But at the moment I'm very UK focused. But I love it, I think it's great. So I work in Manchester, which you would have heard of Manchester. You might have heard of Bristol and London.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So I work around the country, my little town which I also work in. I've got a group. There is Hitchin, but no one's ever heard of that.
Speaker 3:I haven't heard of it either.
Speaker 2:Well, Bob Hope's family came from there.
Speaker 3:Okay, I've heard of him, yeah.
Speaker 2:And David Soul used to drink in one of the pubs in Hitchin at one stage. Do you know David Soul?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:You do, there we are. So it's famous, but not famous so wonderful. So it's great speaking to you, thank, you. If you were giving advice to someone and you can only give them three tips when being in business, particularly in property, what are the three tips you would get people to do? Do you think to avoid failure?
Speaker 3:I would say tip number one, the most crucial tip of all, is get a mentor or coach, okay, if you're going to embark into this real estate business and you don't know the ins and outs of it.
Speaker 3:Tip number two it would be to really educate yourself on the business.
Speaker 3:At least try a rehab first, right, so you can learn the process on how to get the mortgage for your rehab and how to get the budget and get the paperwork and get everything going the subcontractors, the materials and how to coordinate everything from a fix and flipping aspect before transitioning into new construction.
Speaker 3:And then, tip number three, definitely make sure you have the proper support behind you, like your lenders and your realtors and your whole team, so that sure you have the proper support behind you, like your lenders and your realtors and your whole team, so that after you're finished and your subcontractors, so after you finish building the product, you have an exit strategy to be successful, so that you don't fail at your first goal. Because a lot of people jump into new construction don't have the background. People jump into new construction don't have the background, they just think it's a get rich quick thing and they're not set up properly. And then, when they get into it for whatever reason, they get ripped off, and then now they're discouraged and all the pitfalls and all the failures. Then someone could be successful with those three tips.
Speaker 2:I think they're really good tips actually. I mean, I must say planning is really important the amount of people doing development that kind of don't hit the dates they need to hit, and the effect that has on finance and other things. But also your tip about you know having the right team around you you're best off paying one or two more percent on your finance and getting a company that are really going to support you. So sometimes just kind of trying to get the cheapest money out there isn't the way forward. Yes, so you can be very careful about how they treat you because you know some of them will pull the plug as quick as that and some people will know where you've been, they understand your journey and they'll support you.
Speaker 2:So you've got to pick the right people to be around you and subcontractors. The same thing with subcontractors, because I had subcontractors who just deserted us because they had a major developer who gave them 100 houses. They just you're not a priority anymore and it was difficult, you know, getting the right subcontractors that weren't able to do that, weren't big enough to do that, but were big enough to support us. So getting the right team around you, giving them some loyalty and expecting loyalty back.
Speaker 3:I think is really important I agree, yeah, it can make you or break you in this business. You're as good as your team.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much for the chat. So if anyone wants to get in contact with you, we've got a few listeners in America. What's the best way to contact you, Stacey?
Speaker 3:I'm easy to find. If they just Google me, stacey Stewart, they could find me all over social media. My website is bwicontractorscom and my other website for the education and the training and coaching mentoring site and for also for my books and I have digital content that's builtwithstaceycom.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, wonderful. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me, robin, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Bustin' Beyond with Robin Hayhurst. Be sure to tune in next time and visit his website at robinhayhurstcom.